A work machine designed as a combine harvester is used to mow and thresh grains. The threshing occurs thereby by means of a threshing unit, which obtains grain from the harvest collected by the combine harvester through the cutting unit, which is fed to a separating and subsequent cleansing in a grain tank after the threshing. As a further component of the harvest, the chaff and mulch, for example, remain, which is either distributed over the field, or—in the case of straw—can be laid on swath, e.g. to be collected later by means of a baler. Here and in the following, the term “harvest” is understood to mean everything that has been harvested by the thresher, thus including those grains that are not obtained as grain from the harvest, and potentially those grains that remain in the harvest as losses and will be discarded with the straw.
In the thresher, the grain is ground out of the straw by a fundamentally rolling processing—threshed out—and separated from the rest of the harvest, such that it can be fed directly into the cleansing. The rest of the harvest is then fed to the separating section, in which the remaining grain is separated from the harvest, e.g. by means of a shaker assembly, and is then likewise fed to the cleansing.
There are a large number of quality criteria, based on which the quality of the work process, the harvesting process in this case, can be evaluated. First, all of the grains should be removed from the harvest and fed into the grain tank, this being with as little fragmented grain as possible—grain fragments—and a low portion of non-grain in the grains. Second, if possible, the straw should not be destroyed and cut, for example, to the extent that it becomes difficult to make use of later. Third, the time required for processing a field should be kept short, or the fuel consumption should be kept as low as possible. Further quality criteria are conceivable here. Different quality criteria take on importance, depending on the overall situation, in particular depending on the respective economical framework, which are combined to form a work process strategy, in this case a harvesting strategy, for the execution of the work process, in this case the harvesting.
The fulfillment of the above quality criteria requires that the threshing unit and the other working units of the harvester are controlled in a specific manner. For this, a driver assistance system is provided, which controls the working unit according to at least one work process strategy that can be defined by a user, which is aimed at fulfilling at least one quality criterion.
The known agricultural work machine (EP 2 220 926 B 1), includes such a driver assistance system. The driver assistance system has a graphical user interface, by means of which at least a portion of the work process strategy can be specified by a user. For this, the user can specify the desired quality criteria of the work process strategy via a natural language communication sequence. If the user specifies competing quality criteria, which cannot be fulfilled simultaneously, the driver assistance system reacts, preferably with an appropriate warning.
The known agricultural work machine enables an intuitive input of the work process strategy in numerous steps with its driver assistance system. It is disadvantageous that the specification of competing quality criteria may lead to additional input steps, if the user specifies competing quality criteria that cannot be fulfilled simultaneously.